Time Tested
by ZPumpkin
Summary: A lot will change in a year. More can change in a day.


No one had told Ruby that being a Huntress meant travelling across the continent to a strange city made of heat and sandstone, where the days and nights burned. No one had said, in storybook heroics or gruelling training, that she'd have to spend months and months in place called Vacuo, far away from Vale.

No one told her she would spend eleven months and five days in this place, fixing the mess of a power hungry woman, completely alone because there were four cities in all and only four members on her team.

If someone had told her, Ruby might have put a little more thought into throwing herself headlong into every crises. Maybe then her team wouldn't be the experts on Cinder Fall, sent across Remnant like advisors on loan to check that everything was fine in her aftermath.

Ruby would still have become a Huntress, though. That part was unavoidable.

She nurses a goblet of syrupy cactus water, wonderfully chilled and sweating in her hands, while her next mission is decided. Goblets and cactus products are staples of Vacuo, something to do with honoring the history of desert nomads making a living on both these things. All Ruby wants is a regular cup. The curve and foot of a goblet don't sit well in her hands, bumping into the table, digging in the crooks of her fingers.

The man rambles on about the wheres and whys, Ruby lets the noise float over her head. An hour after the meeting is done, her scroll will get an update with all the important details. She sips and counts down the minutes, chips taken from a mountain of twenty two more days.

There's time to waste before she has to work, so Ruby wanders the town. She's been doing this since she arrived, at first to learn her way around this labyrinth of a city, then to just pass the time. People wear their clothes open here, baring their skin to the sun and sand sharpened wind. A corset, cloak, and boots are so out of place that Ruby had to hire a tailor to make new ones when hers shrunk in the wash. Her clothes turns heads, often with a curious frown, then a laugh for the strange girl in red.

She doesn't talk to the shopkeepers about Dust weapons, or the baker about sweets, or to anyone at all really. That's fine by her. Even if it's been eleven months, two days since she had a conversation without the words 'your mission' at the front. Early into her team's separation, the stars had aligned and both she and Yang had a signal at the same time. Staying up into the night for Ruby and early morning for Yang, comparing their assignments. Yang, stuck up in Mistral, laughing about how the snow just melted off her.

Ruby keeps a recording of the conversation, listening to it when she can't sleep.

There's a bar between a five story apartment building and a Dust shop that Ruby sits in when the sand gets her coughing or the heat makes her head swim. Doorless, windowless, an old sign out front saying 'No shirts, no shoes, no problem!' Everything in Vacuo makes a show of being informal.

Ruby sits at a small table in the shade, heat leaking from her clothes. There's a band playing, flutes and guitars, background noise to the general chatter. Vacuo's accent is high and scratchy, different to the slower vowels of Vale that stick to Ruby, a collar with her home address written in every syllable so she remembers she doesn't belong here.

Some days people come to greet her in her little corner, the foreign red Huntress. Today it's a man, broad and smiling. He starts saying something but Ruby gets caught on the scar that goes over one eye, a little longer and thinner but familiar enough that Ruby stumbles her way to _I_ in Weiss's name before she can stop. It sounds like she just said 'why.'

Then the bar's gone in a rose petal flash, the tail end of the man's next sentence turning into a yelp that Ruby hears from outside. The night is prickling cold, steadying a sudden rush of memories. It helps cool a flush of embarrassment too; Weiss and that man looked nothing alike and her partner would have be outraged that Ruby mistook them for a second. Even if they had almost the same scar.

Early into her mission, Ruby had chased down every pair of cat ears in a crowd: purple, black, yellow, spotted, every single one. After a dozen awkward conversations with a puzzled cat faunus, and a few that turned into a lecture about racism, she'd managed to stop that knee jerk reaction. The only reason she'd not run after every blonde was that they never had the tangled bounce of her sisters hair. The scar is a new one, and the reaction very much alive and kicking.

Ruby walks back to her rented house, arms wrapped around herself, as though the cold night is actually bothering her. It's just an excuse to hunch down, stare at the ground and away from any faces she might see in case their eyes were gold or violet or blue. That, and her stomach is tight and empty. Same as the day she first left Patched, her dad holding her hand, and she'd thought she was getting sick on her first day at Signal.

On her couch, scrolling through pictures, Ruby sleeps and dreams of a cramped room, of three girls, of a single gasp.

The desert outside Vacuo is viciously hot, rolling yellow dunes that shimmer in the heat. Every breath scorches Ruby's lungs. The other caravan guards, people in open clothes and wide sun hats, laugh and talk without issue. They've had lives to get used to the desert; Ruby's only had eleven months, six days. They try to include her, asking about what it's like to be a Hunter, about her home, but Ruby gives them one word answers. Anything more and she'd ramble into the night, about Beacon and fighting in the forests and eating noodles at a little shop under the highway, fresh and sweating and giddy from victory.

She rides with the others in an open sided car at the back, sand blowing into her hair, bumping along the cracked road between Vacuo and an outpost. Most of her missions have been about guarding caravans. Ruby's used to the sight of the desert, endless as the ocean but much more lifeless. Used to the press of goggles on her face, keeping the sand from her eyes.

One out of every five Vacuo caravans gets attacked, statistics say. This is a bad thing to tell inexperienced guards. One out of every five becomes surely not us, not today, we'll be fine. Then they relax, and everything goes wrong.

Sure of their numerical safety, no one's prepared for the sudden burst of sand from the sides. Massive Deathstalkers burrow into the open, pincers snipping open and closed like frantic, bone breaking scissors. There's two today, flanking the middle of the caravan line, but Vacuo Deathstalkers are near twice as big as the ones in Vale. Each of them outsizes the largest transport truck.

Ruby's off before anyone else, Crescent Rose unfurled. She hops along the roofs while the other guards scramble for weapons. One Grimm has speared a truck on its tail, the tires spinning uselessly. Its closing for the kill when Ruby flashes across the truck's top, scythe severing its stinger. Hissing, the Deathstalker rams the truck, tips it over, and Ruby jumps aside.

Gunfire and shouts from ahead, the guards organising around the other Grimm. They can whittle it down with numbers, but none of them are specially trained to fight the monsters. The Deathstalker before Ruby is enraged. It cuts a path through the truck, metal sheared through as easily as cloth. Ruby dodges the reaching pincers, darts around its side, swings and only scratches its armor.

Someone shoots it, the bullet pings off the armor, and its blunted tail snaps out. The man goes flying away. It keeps after Ruby, trying to trap her between its pincers, but she's too quick. Flashing from side to side, Crescent Rose screeching up a leg, gouging its shell, taking knicks from its tail. Maybe a hundred more hits like those and Ruby will hurt it. The Deathstalker only needs a lucky hit, two if her Aura's high enough.

Passing by the opened truck, Ruby spots the cargo of spilled Dust, enough red to make a crater. A few barrels of it are still sealed, bombs waiting to explode. Ruby waves for the guards, shouts at them, "Throw a barrel at it!"

It takes them a second, then a few run forwards, the ones crazy enough to be near a Deathstalker, a deadly amount of Dust, and a Huntress. Ruby keeps chipping at the Deathstalker until they have the barrel free, three of them hefting it back and forth. She pops next to them, rose petals spinning, and they throw the barrel towards a charging Grimm.

The barrel falls and rolls under its pincers, towards its unprotected belly. Ruby chambers a round, a red bullet for red Dust, and fires.

The explosion is deafening. Guards are blown back by a burst of wind and fire. The Deathstalker vanishes in a plume, and for a moment there are two suns in the desert. When the fire clears there's a patch of glass, and pieces of white and black shell rain from the cloudless sky.

The other Deathstalker's still fighting, one pincer dangling. Guards are scattered behind it, limp on the sand. Ruby takes the severed stinger of her kill, uses three bursts of semblance to get near it, onto its tail, and into the air. She fires into the sky. Gravity and recoil push the stinger through the Deathstalker's head, cracking. It shudders, once, mandibles chittering, and dies.

They drive through the night, riding on fear and caffeine. Everyone holds their weapon close, cleaning sand out of the triggers. Ruby's sharing a car with two corpses and a pile of supplies. The guards stare at the sky or the desert, even when they talk to each other, heads turned like owls. When the broken moon is highest, they pass around a flask, toasting the air before drinking; a toast to the dead.

Ruby takes a swig when it's her turn, though the drink is too warm, and the pepper taste stings. The woman at the end pours five measures out of the car, for those who can't drink it.

Workers at the outpost are surprised when their supplies arrive on the morning light, a day early and surrounded by dizzily tired people.

There's a cremation the next day. Ruby attends it, standing on the outskirt. Words are said, another drink passed around, and they light a pyre under five cloth wrapped shapes. It smells unpleasantly like cooked meat, and shortly after the fire dies they all crawl into the barracks to sleep.

They're all strangers to Ruby, but she finds something familiar in the way some look over their shoulders during breakfast, as though they're expecting someone to arrive late, joking about the traffic. The flinches when no one arrives go deeper than hers, but the source is the same. She goes home soon, though, and she'll be free of that stark absence they feel. Guilty, Ruby sits by them and fumbles her way through a story. They don't smile, of course not, but at least they finish eating. Ruby's done worse at consoling people.

Later, an official tells her that they're going to be docked pay for damage to valuable property. An entire barrel of Dust, the man reminds her, shaking his head. She's not being paid for this, anyways, working under government contract, but there's a rising urge to hit this man for being concerned over property damage while a pile of human ashes cools not twenty yards away.

The trip back to Vacuo is tensed, sleeping in watches, the drivers alternating so they're only still for minutes at a time. Echoes of chittering, clicking, growling Grimm noises haunt them at night. Daylight shows how far away help is. Ruby is one of the few who doesn't collapse on the ground when they arrive at Vacuo. She stretches, shakes sand from her cape and hair and boots, and goes to give her mission report. The others would pick their way to their homes eventually. Previous experience tells her that they don't want her help, resentful of her trained calmness.

She's seen it before, and will see it again before her time here is over.

Ruby is prepared to wait fourteen days to go home; she is not prepared to be startled awake in the dawnlight by a scroll message, beeping, that says Yang is in a Vale hospital and Ruby could return early if she wished. As if Ruby wasn't ready to run across miles of scorching desert. An airship has been thoughtfully delayed, in case she chose to end the mission now. She's onboard before she's finished dressing, corset half unstrung and cape in her fist. billowing out behind her like a sail.

A trip from Vale to Vacuo takes roughly seven hours. Each one trickles by, ice water down Ruby's spine, and she paces the ships stomach. Twenty turns to a minute. Counting these is easier than seconds because eight hundred and forty turns seems like less than twenty five thousand two hundred seconds. Too long, the ship has to move faster, she'll get out and push if she has to. Some of the passengers ask if she'd like to sit down. She might have growled at them.

The ship lands and Ruby's gone so fast that hats and newspapers are picked up in the backdraft, an airborne tidal wave of debris that scatters onto her head when she stops in front of the hospital.

Ozpin is sitting in the waiting room, cane over his knees, sipping coffee. He says "Room two three eight" when he sees Ruby. It takes three crashes into medicine carts and two stops to ask for directions, then Ruby's in front of the room, in the doorway, by the bed and frozen by the grin Yang flashes her.

It's so damn familiar that she laughs and cries and throws herself onto her big sister, easing up after she gets a pained hiss, but warm arms wrap around her back anyways. The violet eyes, a little wet now, the blonde hair that's grown longer, the warm smell that's not Vacuo's heat but like hot chocolate. Ruby recommits it all to memory.

"You've grown," Yang says after Ruby takes a chair. She's pushed herself up, resting her back on the pillow. A swath of bandages shows up around her abdomen. Yang doesn't acknowledge it, tussling Ruby's hair. "When's the last time you got a haircut?"

"Awhile." Ruby slaps the hand away, patting her hair down. It's gone to her shoulders, untended since she left Vale. "What happened to you?"

"A Scylla got the drop on me. Big seal things, tentacles and claws everywhere. Ugliest things I've ever seen. I got it back though, punched it so hard it just exploded." Yang puts her hands together then spreads them out, making a pop noise. There are new scars on her arms, some still bright pink. "Turns out they're a bit poisonous, though."

Ruby opens her mouth and realizes she doesn't know what to say. It'll be okay, you'll get better? Yang would roll her eyes at that, of course she'll get better, she's Yang Xia Long, be back to breaking punching bags in a day or two you just watch. Instead she shifts on her seat, waiting for Yang to say something, and Yang seems to do the same.

Weiss and Blake show up when Ruby is asleep, having earned her right to stay the night through glares and the combined threats of two Huntress sisters. It's the click of Weiss's heels that wakes her, but Blake's already in the room, silent and sneaky as always. Maybe more so. It's morning, early enough that a nurse is tutting in the doorway about visiting hours.

"They're fine," Yang grumbles, fumbling out of sleep. The nurse pauses, shrugs, and exchanges nods with Blake but no one else.

Once she's gone, Weiss looks about, says, "Well, isn't this a nice reunion."

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," Yang drawls.

Ruby's watching the bare cat ears on Blake's head twitch, exposed, and blurts, "Where's your bow?"

Blake frowns, glancing up. "I haven't worn it in months."

"You had it on last time I saw you," Yang says. "Did you finally drop the secret agent faunus thing?"

"It, became impractical," Blake says, looking at the three of them looking at her, ears lowering just a bit. Nervous or shy, it's been awhile since Ruby could study her moods, and the face she has on is a better mask than the one she had before.

Blake had finally taken off her bow and none of them had been around to smile and remind her that she's still Blake. One of those team moments that Ruby fantasized about, like the day Yang and Weiss shared a laugh or the first time Weiss called Ruby a good leader, and she had missed it.

Swallowing salt, Ruby takes a closer look at her team. The Schnee logo is gone from Weiss's typical clothing. New scars on Yang's arms, each one worth a story about punching some monster that Ruby can't correct her on, laughing under her baleful glare. Blake's bow. Vertigo spins her vision, sickening weightlessness that starts in her guts.

Standing with a hurried excuse of thirst, Ruby takes a second to notice that her eyes go over Weiss's head now, barely. At the same time Ruby looks down Weiss looks up. Their eyes meet. Ruby traces the scar, still the same, but everything else is different, in tiny ways as bothering as an itch.

She slips from the room to wander. Emptiness bubbles into her throat. How much could she have missed in a year? It was only eleven months and thirteen days, there couldn't be that much difference between then and now. They just had to pick up where they left off.

Ruby comes up with twenty reasons for Weiss to go with her to a little cafe, and organizes it by how desperate they sound. It's a nice place is the first, they should catch up is the second. The seventh is that she misses the way Weiss snorts when she's laughing really hard. The way her hair shines in sunlight, like snow, is eleven. Twenty is that Blake sort of disappeared, though Yang says that her sneaky partner visits at least twice a day, and Ruby is very, achingly lonely, so much that her bones sometimes hurt of it.

Weiss listens to the first, points out that there's a shop a few minutes from the hotel they've lodged in, but says yes after the second. A blink and smile, Ruby leads the way, burying the rest of her arguments before anything blurts out, blind and awkward.

Having ice cream without it melting in seconds, not tasting of fruity cactus water, is nice. The cups too. Ruby rolls her empty glass between her hands, listening to Weiss leave a breadcrumb trail of her time in Atlas. The weather was nice, rainier than Vale. Lots of tall buildings. Not too many issues.

Ruby says, "I'm calling it mission Cinder Fallout." and Weiss slumps, head in her hands.

"Is that really something to joke about?" Her voice is strained, and something sharp tumbles down Ruby's ribs, leaving cold in the scratches.

Ruby asks, "Any problems with your father," quickly, expecting a list of complaints: about his cold attitude, casual racism, obsession with perfection. The usual things she heard in Beacon. It's a topic Weiss has never failed to be completely distracted by. Ruby would then make a joking threat, and Weiss would pause, like she was considering it, then say he wasn't worth the trouble.

Weiss goes completely still instead, marble statue stillness, petrified into dead rock by the mere mention. Any threats Ruby has been preparing for this part become a lot more serious.

"Not now," Weiss says, standing, leaving. "Just, not right now, Ruby."

Weiss retreats after that, an old tactic from their first year together, running from the problem so she could compose a response worthy of billion Lien negotiations. The trust that let her stand her ground with Ruby and the team, let them see her before she's perfect, has weakened, and it's salt on a year long wound.

For a few days Ruby spends nearly every hour with Yang, half to see if she can catch Blake during one of her visits. Yang studies the pictures of Vacuo's motorcycles, thin things with all the pipes exposed, and says they look kinda cool but Bumblebee is better. Ruby fawns over the penguin pictures, one with Yang standing in a crowd, arms outstretched, queen of the penguins. There's another of a man wearing a coat so puffy it looks like a bear, perched on some kind of modified snowmobile.

"Who's this?" Ruby asks.

Yang chews her lip. "Promise not to freak out?"

"Why," Ruby starts. Then, "Sure, yeah. I'll be good."

"New boyfriend, met a few months ago, he said he'd be okay with the long distance thing so,"

Whatever else she means to say is drowned out by Ruby pouncing on the scroll. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asks, and scrutinizes the picture of him, all fuzz and cool guy pose on his funny looking ice bike, "I have to meet him, Yang you must let me talk to him."

She gets the sigh of the long suffering from her sister. "You do this everytime, Ruby. He's fine, really. No need to 'ask' him questions while you play with Crescent Rose."

"I only did that once, when I was twelve!" Ruby squeaks, blushing. She'd done it in front of their dad, too. Not her finest moment, especially when her clumsy younger self dropped the scythe onto the guys foot. "Besides, he was a jerk anyways."

Yang crosses her arms, frowning."We learned that after you interrogated him, and glared at him so much he broke up with me because, and I quote, my sister was a bit too much. So, as my dear sister, I'd like it if you waited for me to introduce you two, because of course I'm doing that. Eventually. But if this is going to fail, I'd like it to be just because it wouldn't work between us."

Fiddling with her fingers, steepling and folding, Ruby says, "I'm not that bad."

"You are the least romantic little sister I've ever seen." The frown eases off her face though, and she pats Ruby's head, messing her hair. "I would have told you earlier, like the day after I asked him, but that was sorta impossible."

Sinking into the chair so her spine makes a C shape, Ruby nods. Yang's fingers scratch her scalp, like they're kids again and Ruby's climbed into Yang's bed to listen to a midnight story. Except that was years ago, and Ruby sinks lower when the scratching stops, missing it far too much.

"You stopped dying your hair," Yang states, brow furrowed, sounding a little lost.

Ruby looks up, to the fringe of her hair, all black now. She hadn't stopped, she had just been too busy with her loneliness, lacking her team like the breath had been knocked from her and never returned. "Does it look bad?"

A thumb brushes a lock behind her ear. Yang looks at her, studies her as Ruby had studied Weiss, as though she was suddenly unfamiliar. "No," Yang says. "Just, different." A pause as she weighs words, gaze drifting to the window. "Are you okay, Ruby?"

"Yeah." Ruby says, and it's a bit sharp and a bit rushed. "Of course." Ruby suspects it's only sisterly trust that keeps Yang from asking again.

The moment Yang's asleep, Ruby runs for a salon, asking them to copy the hair she has in older photos, a bit shorter, red tipped. Comparing past to present in the mirror, Ruby notices the ruddy brown tan she's earned from Vacuo's sun, and sees just how much she's grown in the last gasp of her puberty: inches taller, longer legs, new curves. Somehow she'd ignored every mirror for eleven months straight, completely ignorant of the changes. It does explain why she'd thought her clothes had shrunk exactly twice in those months. The tailors had always looked at her measurements, shook their heads, and brought out a tape measure.

Staring into a mirror, Ruby tells herself that it's just a physical thing, finally catching up with her older teammates. She can't meet the reflection's silver eyes.

One of life's great mysteries is about faunus senses. They can see in the dark, sure, but if they had extra ears did they hear better? Could they hit people with horns, were their claws good for clawing? One time Ruby had asked Blake about it, because she always seemed to know when people were coming, what they were saying from the other side of the room. Blake just turned the page, half smiling, her bow giving a solitary twitch.

Years later, Ruby is moving slow as a worm down hospital halls, chasing Blake's shadow, just in case that answer wasn't an enigmatic joke. She doesn't know what Blake's doing, but it's been almost a week since they spoke. Blake has some barefoot, dirty, still and small person in her arms. Overwhelming curiosity is natural in these sorts of circumstances.

Blake ends up in a wing filled with children, bandaged and solemn faced, who all gather around her knees when she marches in. Most of them are faunus, tails and ears and horns. A doctor takes the person, a boy with twig thin antlers and bruises across his neck, setting him in a bed. It's clean and efficient, practiced, no questions asked.

Ruby leans on the door so she can see without being seen, eyes just breaking the edge. Blake crouches down, perched on her toes so she's eye level with the kids, her back to Ruby. Maybe this is when her face unfreezes, turns kind, motherly for these kids who just watch her with hollow eyes, rapt and adoring.

Then Blake looks over her shoulder right at Ruby, and Ruby goes wide eyed. The kids turn to look at her, too. After a moment, she raises a hand and waves. A few wave back. Fiddling with her skirt hem, Ruby waits for Blake in the hall, stomach tensing into knots.

"You're terrible at stealth" is the first thing Blake says, no frown or fury on her face. Ruby smiles like a wince. Cat ears take her attention while she rolls apologies around; Blake looks weirdly naked without her bow, as naked as Yang would look if she cut her hair off. They flicker, little shakes in every slight breeze, like a dance.

Blake clears her throat and Ruby chokes on words, blushing.

In a little nook of the hospital's cafeteria, Blake talks about finding kids in the streets. Orphans or runaways, a lot of them faunus, all leftovers from the White Fang's rise and fall. She found them sleeping in the alleys, in the cracks, huddled together in the rain. Her hands clench so hard on the table that they turn white and she doesn't notice. When she says "I couldn't let them go abandoned, not again," her voice carries such a painful familiarity that Ruby takes her hand by reflex.

Her time in Vale had started off as a clean up detail for the White Fang, and Blake had turned it into a rescue mission. Most of the kids Ruby had seen, Blake had brought in.

After she's done, Blake frees her hand, grabs her other hand with it, squeezing lightly. She glances at Ruby, then the walls, and says, carefully, as though she might trip and fall on the words, "I'm not sure I can be a Huntress anymore."

The cup in Ruby's hand creaks, and she gapes.

"Taking care of these kids and fighting Grimm at the same time is impossible, Ruby," Blake continues. Her ears have pasted to her head, almost hidden in her black hair. "They gave me a cut with the medical bills, but I can barely afford it, and there's more children out there who need help."

"We can help!" Ruby says, heart racing, beating against her breast. "I, Yang we can, and Weiss! We'll get her to help, you know she will even if she gets weird about it before, and we can take shifts, help pay, and you won't have to leave!"

But Blake's shaking her head. She doesn't look up from the table. "I won't keep you from your dreams, Ruby. This is my responsibility, my mission now." Taking Ruby's empty hand in both of hers, Blake holds it until the shaking stops, and puts on a sad little smile. "This isn't goodbye, I'll still be in the city. We'll just be separate, sometimes."

Ruby makes herself nod, tries to match her friend's smile but it might have come out deformed, she can't tell, and Blake squeezes her hand and leaves. She sits alone, taking slow breaths until the pressure in her chest is bearable. There are cracks in her glass, shivering out form where her fingers gripped. The water in it spills out, dripping off her fingers into a growing pool.

That pressure in her chest coils up all day, tighter and tighter, a snake tensing and ready to strike. Its shaking tail is her twithcy fingers, its fangs are in her burning throat. Before it crushes her lungs and spine, Ruby runs to the wild forest, runs towards the garbled howling of Beowolves, runs until she's found them. Crescent Rose in her hands, sharp, ready to strike.

Vale in the morning is honey painted, leaves glimmering gold, walls and roads brushed with it. Black sludge drips from Ruby, a trail of Grimm gore marking her path. She is sore and calm, a peculiar sort that's empty as the eye of a storm. Somehow Weiss is the first and only one to catch her in this state; she blanches from ear to fingers and shrieks at her to "Clean up before anyone sees you and starts a panic, what were you even doing."

The bath water runs black as tar when she's done, and needs to be unclogged twice. All the while she's been talking to Weiss through the door, thanking her for lending her bath. There's no exact moment when she started talking about Blake, but it all pours out while she cleans. Weiss stays silent, and Ruby doubts she was listening until she asks for clothes and gets a bathrobe. Her clothes are in the wash, and with any luck the stains would come out.

Weiss takes the bed, legs crossed, and Ruby tries to find a way to sit on the floor that doesn't make Weiss launch her eyes to the ceiling, muttering about modesty. Eventually she gives up and takes a chair. No matter how her muscles twinge, begging her to slouch and relax, she keeps her knees locked together to appease Weiss.

And she sits, and she waits for the words to come, the easy jokes and the almost familial teasing, or a half hearted scolding. The silence hangs dead between them. Ruby tries, digging for something to start off with. They just need some momentum.

"Nice weather," she blurts, and slaps her palms into her eyes immediately.

Weiss blinks, glances out the window behind Ruby. "It's… agreeable."

"Yeah."

Ruby drags her hands away, chews her lip. Weiss shuffles in place, folding her hands, unfolding them. Folds them again.

"You dyed your hair," Weiss says.

"Yup," Ruby agrees.

They stare at each other. A clock ticks away. Cars honk outside.

Ruby collapses on herself, folding up in the chair so her forehead meets her knees. Her breath blusters out, peters into a long sigh. "Why do we feel like strangers?" she asks the floor.

"It's been a year, Ruby," Weiss answers.

The counts still burnt into her head, so Ruby corrects her. "Eleven months and thirteen days."

"Yes, well, a lot can change in that time." Weiss is picking through words, using them like they're fragile ice sculptures. "Some of it's good, like Blake rescuing kids and Yang's new romance. Some of it's, not so great." Ruby hears the bed creak, boots clacking towards her. A hand lands feather light on her shoulder. "Like, for example, I'm not an heiress anymore."

Ruby's head snaps up, and Weiss takes a step back, hand dropping to her side. "What?"

"My father and I had some disagreements over company policy." Weiss brushes her pristine skirt down. "Rather a lot of them, actually. In the end, he wouldn't change, so I, well," she snorts, no more than a huff that might be amused. "I took a page from Yang's book, told him outright what I thought of him, and next time we saw each other was with our lawyers and paperwork."

"Weiss," Ruby whispers. Before Weiss can protest, Ruby's hugged her, arms wrapped across her back. Weiss freezes, then pats Ruby's back once and leaves the arm there. It's pretty good for her, especially since the other arm is trapped.

"Stop worrying," Weiss says, making herself sound exasperated. "This was probably inevitable, anyways. I've changed too much to go back to the cold, judgemental girl he wanted."

"I'll kick him for you," Ruby says into her shoulder.

"No, Ruby."

"Really hard. Right between the legs."

"Ruby."

"I'll be so fast he won't even see me. Just sudden, karmatic pain."

"You're insane," Weiss says, a laugh hitching her voice.

Ruby giggles enough for both of them, muffled into Weiss's shoulder.

For Yang's recovery party, Blake lends them her apartment, which has books and furniture and not much else. Plenty of room for the mountain of greasy pizza boxes and bright yellow banners that Weiss spends an hour picking out. Ruby makes a brief attempt to get in a ten foot Achieve Men cut out. Weiss yells at her. They argue about decorations until Yang and Blake walk in, and Yang's exaggerated surprise turns into cackles; the cut out is looming over the couch and the streamers are melting onto the floor.

Blake blinks once and covers her mouth.

The party is for Yang, and they all clap her on the back and nod when she shows them the triple scar lines that hospitalized her. But Yang hangs around Blake all night, goading her into constant conversation. Several times Weiss takes a step towards them, stops, then wanders back to Ruby, mulling over a thought, drumming an erratic beat on her cup. In unspoken words, this is Blake's going away party.

Ruby takes to the corners, a ghost of a presence. Looking at Blake is a little hard, like there's been an accident and if Ruby looks down she'll see her own arm on the floor. Better to just ignore it. She still feels a disconnected soreness running circuits through her chest.

When Weiss and Blake get distracted over the finer points of a book older than the four of them put together, Yang slips off to make a call; Ruby follows on tiptoes. She's telling her scroll that yeah, she's all healed up, no need to worry it'd take way more than a stupid fluke to keep Yang Xia Long down. There's a softness to her face that once belonged to Ruby alone.

Ruby swallows the acrid lump in her throat and closes in. Leans close, almost hearing the words of the boy on the other end. Reaching around with her other hand, Yang baps her forehead and Ruby recoils, yelping.

"Just my sis being nosy," Yang says, rolling her eyes for Ruby to see. "Yeah, you'll meet her soon, don't worry. Call ya later, alright?"

The scroll clicks shut, and hands on hips, Yang turns to Ruby. "Patience, Ruby," she chides, grinning.

Ruby stares. She doesn't go to Yang and shine her best puppy dog eyes until her sister reads her a hero's story, mimicking the voices, with Ruby's head in her lap, just so Ruby can keep that softened face for herself. She does breathe in, slow, and nod, and say, "I'll wait."

A squeak that reaches for squawking catches their attention. Blake has Weiss trapped in a full body hug, Weiss sputtering but unresisting.

Raising a brow, Yang asks, "Did I miss something? Is it group hug time?"

"Absolutely not," Weiss says as Blake smirks and nods. A second's consideration and Yang strides over to engulf them both in her arms. Ruby flashes over to join, momentum knocking them all to the ground. They make a big ball of indignation and laughter, warm and comfortable on Blake's hardwood floor. When Blake, from somewhere under Yang, says that it turns out she won't have to resign Hunting thanks to Weiss, Ruby squeezes them so hard that Yang complains of cracked ribs.

Later on Yang knocks herself out on one drink too many and Blake puts her on the couch with a blanket. Then, yawning, she goes to her own room, giving her teammates free reign as long as they keep quiet. Which leads to Ruby and Weiss sitting on the roof's ledge, quarter full liquor bottle between them, drinking to the sprawl of Vale. The city lights glint yellow through windows, bright and lonely as fallen stars..

The silence sits with them, light and amiable, and Ruby hates to break it but she's dying of curiosity. "What'd you say to Blake?"

"I offered her an orphanage for the children and a standing contract with the hospital." Weiss watches the distance as she speaks, tone so casual that she might as well do this everyday. "It's not a big deal, Ruby, so stop before you get too excited. I took my fair share from the company before I left, more than enough for this, and there's a pleasant irony to using my father's Lien to help unfortunate faunus."

Ruby's grinning ear to ear. After a beat, Weiss glances out of the corner of her eye, sees it, and looks away. She huffs when Ruby leans onto her shoulder, black hair mixing with white, but doesn't push her away.

"She's still going to spend most of her time collecting kids," Weiss adds.

"You're the best teammate ever."

The barest crack of a smile sneaks over Weiss's face at that. It fades quickly, and Weiss places her hand over Ruby's. Very softly, she asks, "Do you ever think about her, about Cinder Fall?"

Cold shoots up Ruby's nerves, chases out the liquid warmth and friendly buzz, dries her throat. Her hands curl into themselves so the nails bite her palm, and Weiss tightens her grip over the one she's claimed.

"We have to talk about it eventually, Ruby. We didn't get a chance before, with you hiding all day, and then Ozpin sending us out."

"It's fine, Weiss," Ruby croaks. The ghosts of flames bite her fingers, sulphur and ashes, heavy metal in her hands.

"Please tell me you're not okay, Ruby," Weiss says. She lifts Ruby's head from her shoulder, noses inches apart. Ruby feels miles away, on a cracked Vale street, dark and firelit. "Please." So desperate that Ruby crumbles.

It's not the blood that Ruby remembers most, the copper tang was familiar after four years of close calls. Not the ease of it, though it took her a week to touch Crescent Rose afterwards. It's the noise, the single gasp, the clink of glass hitting the ground, then so silent that Ruby could hear her blood running.

"I didn't mean to kill her," Ruby whispers. She's so cold that Weiss's hands, one on her hand, one on her cheek, burn. Shivering to her bones. A hiccup rips from her throat. Her glass tumbles from the roof, and she hears it crack before the tears start.

Weiss gathers her up, cradling her as Ruby cries an ocean, full of stinging salt and a roar in her ears. "I didn't mean to," Ruby echoes. A year ago, she watches Cinder slip from her scythe, leaving behind a red smear and the sound of her gasp.

Later, on Weiss's advice, she'll go to Cinder's grave, a sparse tombstone over a patch of black earth where the grass will never grow. The last mark of a woman who would have burned the world. Ruby will stand by the foot of it for an hour that aches like eternity. She'll feel guilt for the killing, but no regret. If she had that moment to repeat, to change, she'd do it again to save her team.

Now, while Weiss rubs circles over her shoulder blade, she cries until she's hollow, for all the little things that broke and changed that day and the year after it..


End file.
